Britain’s Bonnet Brigade Triumphs
Worried that the writers’ strike will mean that mindless reality shows will take over television, destroying every vestige of history and discernment? Here’s a sliver of sunshine: “Cranford,” based on three novels by 19th-century novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, crushed its celebrity-show rival the other night on British television.
“Cranford,” co-produced by the BBC’s regular costume drama collaborator, PBS station WGBH Boston, features Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins (shown here with Lisa Dillon at left and Imelda Staunton at right) as two seventysomething sisters who rule the roost in the village of Cranford in the late 1800s.
Masterpiece Theatre will broadcast the series in the U.S. in 2008, but only after getting through TV-movie adaptations of all six Jane Austen novels. Frankly, I’m so Austen’d out that I’d rather get right to the Dench and Judi show.
